Twilight for the Kimono

"Look, what is tradition?" he asked. "It's something that people involved in Japanese tea ceremony and flower arranging worry about. A tradition is only a tradition as long as people need it, as long as it's practical. We need to make kimono-making practical again."

In recent years, his company has opened factories in China and North Korea, while shaving the number of working looms at its quaint wooden Nishijin factory from 100 to 10. Only design prototypes are made here now. Shipped abroad, they are mass-produced by foreign weavers who are paid a fraction of what skilled Japanese craftsmen charge.

By moving production, Kawamura said, he has managed not only to honor the fact that kimono-like robes first came to Japan from China some 1,200 years ago but also to slash costs and stabilize the company's finances.

"Everyone in Nishijin lies about their kimono production," he said. "Almost all of them are making kimonos in China, or else using electric looms. Very, very few are using Japanese weavers anymore. I'm the only one who will admit it, so I'm criticized by my peers. But I am ashamed of nothing. They are the ones who should be ashamed for hiding the truth."

Kimonos or obi made in China, he said, are virtually indistinguishable from those made in Japan. To emphasize his point, he walked over to a display holding a duplicate of a Kawamura peach-toned medallion obi worn by Empress Michiko. Next to it was a cream obi made for her daughter-in-law, Princess Kiko. Both, Kawamura said, were made in China.

One hundred percent Japanese kimonos are almost impossible to find anymore. In the 1990s, Japan's troubled textile industry successfully lobbied the government to embrace globalization by opening the long-protected domestic silk industry to foreign competition. With its higher cost structure, Japanese silk thread, although considered extremely fine, is at least 20 times the average price of Chinese, Brazilian or Southeast Asian silk. As tariffs dropped and cheaper imports became widely available, the Japanese silk industry collapsed, leaving only two small factories to produce tiny quantities of inaccessibly priced thread.

"I am making kimonos more cheaply, but they are not cheap kimonos," Kawamura said. His best Chinese-made obi sell for an average of $8,000, about the same as obi made in Japan. "It was only the Japanese silk companies that said Chinese silk wasn't good."

"The kimono is not just about our country," he added. "It is about the Japanese race -- our daily rituals, our history, our religion, about who we are as a people. We have to do anything we can to protect the kimono, even if that means making them overseas."

Two Old Masters

On a brisk morning last month, 102-year-old Yasujiro Yamaguchi raided his closets.

A multicolored rain of silk -- pieces of the kimonos and obi he has woven over the decades -- poured onto the low-rise dining table. Samples of his work are on display at London's Victoria and Albert Museum; others are housed in museums in Stockholm and Paris. He wove 10 table centerpieces for Gen. Douglas MacArthur as a goodbye gift when the American left Japan in 1951.

"Here," he said, lifting up a salmon-toned fabric depicting the first daffodils of spring, a pattern he gave to Princess Diana. "She was visiting Kyoto, and I presented her with a more elaborate one, but she saw this one, a bit more subdued, and asked for it, too. How could I refuse?"

Yamaguchi's small wooden workshop sits on a quiet street in Nishijin. But there was a time not so long ago when the world outside was filled with the colors now lighting up his dining table.

"The women, and men too, would come to Nishijin in kimonos to order more kimonos," he said. "The color! They would fill the streets with their color, and leave so much cash that we used rulers to count the stacks of yen because it was faster that way. Those were the days when the sounds of working looms were everywhere"

He grew quiet, glancing out his window. "But now, Nishijin is gray."

Many kimono makers who were once regarded as legends have left the business. Yamaguchi's brother, Itaro, who turns 105 on Dec. 18, spent his younger days as one of the district's most formidable kimono entrepreneurs. But he handed off his business to his eldest son, who has also largely shifted production to China. Itaro now spends his days obsessively working with local weavers on a remarkable re-creation in silk of the four original "Tale of Genji" scrolls.

"I wanted to leave something for future generations to see," he said, one of the extraordinarily detailed scrolls unfurled at his home, a few minutes from Nishijin. "I just want to show them what we were capable of."

Only a few blocks from Yasujiro Yamaguchi's workshop in the heart of Nishijin, more and more stores selling Western-style wedding dresses have popped up in recent years. Yamaguchi himself came face to face with changing tastes two years ago when one of his own granddaughters wore a Western dress at her wedding reception instead of an uchikake, or traditional bridal kimono.

"It cannot be helped," he said. "All we can do now is keep trying to make kimonos so beautiful that they will no longer be able to resist it. What choice do we have?"